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LTTP: Halo 5 Guardians, a.k.a. Halo fans are worse than Star Wars fans

Sure, but they need to deal with fan feedback and/or backlash if they were to decide to take something beloved in really off the rails / surprise for no reason (aka the Rian Johnson’s subvert expectations above all else approach). You love to have fans because they are dedicated and buy your stuff, well they are not your mind slaves either… is it frustrating for creators? Yeah it is in all industries where there are fans, which is why they try to invent new things instead of only working on a single IP…

I played the game and it didn't feel too bad actually.

People could say it was low point, backlash certainly wasn't needed to get Dev's change direction (if they did in Infinite).

It wasn't as dramatic as say, what Santa Monica did to Kratos in new God of War games.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
I played the game and it didn't feel too bad actually.
Glad you like it, not saying it is bad just fell short of the lofty expectations the franchises had for itself and what 343i hyped people up for. The content rich game is still not there (and Forge is good and should be there, but that cannot be the only way they expect to add content).

People could say it was low point, backlash certainly wasn't needed to get Dev's change direction (if they did in Infinite).
Well they did delay it and now most of the leadership group is gone. Pretending the game met expectations (in schedule too) and blaming fans always just gets you so far…

It wasn't as dramatic as say, what Santa Monica did to Kratos in new God of War games.
Change in and of itself does not need to be bad, execution is what matters.
 

DarkTom

Member
I'm replaying it at the moment, and I am disappointed. I have issues with the level and encounter design, and the game is too easy, we had to play in Heroic because of that, while we played all the previous one in normal difficulty. I know you're "supposed to" play in Heroic, but we like the normal difficulty, except in this game where it is really boring.
There are some missions where all you have to do is press X in front on computers, you can't use your gun, just walking looking for computers...
Gunplay is fine though.

Visually it's pretty good and environments are varied enough.

I gave 7/10 to Halo 4 and Halo 5 the first time, after replaying them, I would give Halo 4 8/10 and Halo 5 6/10 (I'm using the full scale, 5 is average, 6 is fine, 7 is good and 8 is very good ; not some everything-below-8 is garbage scale)
 
Glad you like it, not saying it is bad just fell short of the lofty expectations the franchises had for itself and what 343i hyped people up for. The content rich game is still not there (and Forge is good and should be there, but that cannot be the only way they expect to add content).


Well they did delay it and now most of the leadership group is gone. Pretending the game met expectations (in schedule too) and blaming fans always just gets you so far…


Change in and of itself does not need to be bad, execution is what matters.

Am talking about Halo 5. That game has quite a bit of content.

Infinite is what it is. Still being worked on.
 

Mr Reasonable

Completely Unreasonable
Yeah people were stupid to complain about basic functions that had been part of the franchise since the early 2000s. I mean Infinite finally gave us all of that and more, right? Oh wait.

- No splitscreen
- No forge on launch
- No working theater
- No content

But I guess that's complaining too so I'm hoping for the next game to be even worse!
Yeah, I think it's kinda ridiculous that those things are considered to be important enough to overshadow the entire game.

Most games aren't split screen, yet Halo must do it because it did it 20 years ago, when split screen was very popular.

Forge and theatre (afaik) aren't things that other games do regularly.

Infinite shipped with a full campaign and 10 multiplayer maps. Halo 2 launched with 11 maps. Halo 3 launched with 11 maps. Halo 4 launched with 10 maps. Etc.

As a package, Halo Infinite rivalled most other games that get released. Good campaign, great multiplayer that satisfied the fanbase and 10 maps.

Yet, it sounds like a shell of a game the way some people talk about it. Has become the prevailing way that people talk about it.

I welcome more maps, and did feel like it needed more (esp when they removed a map from the ranked playlist). But, I don't think that Infinite at launch was a bad package, and neither did other people around here who rated it GOTY. I can't believe how people have pushed the narrative on this game.

And that is why I say it's a poisoned chalice, because you can't just make the GOTY, you've got to satisfy lots of other requirements that other games don't have to.
 

nightmare-slain

Gold Member
i'm another one who enjoyed Halo 5 but i didn't play all the games until just before 5 came out. I remember playing through 1-4 in preperation for 5. so i don't have any nostalgia for it. prior to 2015 my only experience with Halo was a couple hours of Halo 3 at a friends house whenever that launched.

in terms of gameplay i think it got better with each game. yeah i think 5 has the best gameplay (at least until Infinite). i can't remember much of the story as i haven't replayed them but i do remember thinking that the Bungie games got better. 1 wasn't all that great, 2 was good, and i really liked 3. overall i prefered 4 +5 over the Bungie games.

the only thing i can think of that people might not have liked about Halo 5 is that there is less focus on Master Chief and you play as some other character(s). by the end of the game i knew i was finally into Halo and that i was excited for Halo 6.

Halo Infinite is by far my favourite Halo game. is it perfect? nah but i liked the story and the open world gameplay. combat was a load of fun too and i feel it took some inspiration from Doom.
 
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Dutchy

Member
Yeah, I think it's kinda ridiculous that those things are considered to be important enough to overshadow the entire game.
Yeah actually ridiculous that the majority of the game's functionality is absent. It doesn't matter at all and it's not like Forge didn't make for a boost in the game's popularity lately. So a working theater and splitscreen are just two more drops in the bucket. It really is an invalid complaint.
Most games aren't split screen, yet Halo must do it because it did it 20 years ago, when split screen was very popular.
They are. Especially First Person Online Shooters
Forge and theatre (afaik) aren't things that other games do regularly.
Exactly. Which is why games like Halo 3 gained such a massive following. It's the thousands of creative video's being produced to this day. You can't even capture a single angle in Halo Infinite without the recording being an inaccurate playback of your actions.
Infinite shipped with a full campaign and 10 multiplayer maps. Halo 2 launched with 11 maps. Halo 3 launched with 11 maps. Halo 4 launched with 10 maps. Etc.
Most of which is objectively underwhelming as player numbers show. Not to mention it had only 3 game modes for the longest time (And once standard game modes are now tied to limited-time events). Have we gotten anything remotely close to the likes of Pit, Narrows, Guardian, Lockout etc.?

As a package, Halo Infinite rivalled most other games that get released. Good campaign, great multiplayer that satisfied the fanbase and 10 maps.
Not in a longshot. It's not just the people that gave up on Infinite that are voicing their complaints. It's every content creator as well, even those who are financially dependable on the game's success. Why would they be doing that if they thought the game had legs to stand on? The lack of (quality) content is a universally accepted fact unless you're simply to stubborn to see the reality of things.
Yet, it sounds like a shell of a game the way some people talk about it. Has become the prevailing way that people talk about it.
You care too much about what most people think and it's making your judgement very clouded. You can disagree with someone without twisting facts.
I welcome more maps, and did feel like it needed more (esp when they removed a map from the ranked playlist). But, I don't think that Infinite at launch was a bad package, and neither did other people around here who rated it GOTY. I can't believe how people have pushed the narrative on this game.

And that is why I say it's a poisoned chalice, because you can't just make the GOTY, you've got to satisfy lots of other requirements that other games don't have to.
GOTY? What?

You're talking about the NeoGaf GOTY? The one that a couple hundred of niche video-game forum gamers voted on? Yeah that's definitely a great metric.
 

Bernardougf

Member
I thought that it was a pretty awesome game and a very solid middle chapter of what was supposed to be a trilogy, I presume. But I guess now we'll never gonna see a proper resolution to this storyline because Halo fans be like: "waaah, why Cortana is the bad guy?", "waaah, why can't I play as Mister Chef for the twelfth consecutive game in a row?", "waaah, I can't be happy about anything!"

Reading some random comments around the net feels like listening to those die hard Star Wars dorks who always bitch about literally everything that's not the original trilogy or the expanded universe.

Like, for example, take this extremely long-winded response to a question that I found while Googling why do people dislike Halo 5 so much. It's basically some turbo-fan contraditcting herself by first criticizing the game for expecting the audience to have prior knowledge about some obscure lore that's apparently only described in the books but then, a few sentences later, criticizes the game for not adhering to some obscure piece of lore that one can only know about if they read the books. Or she's criticizing 343 for giving Master Chief more character because he is supposed to be a silent protagonist, but then almost immediately kinda praising the fact that he has more complex relationships with other charters in the story? Seriously, if that's like a typical example of a die hard Halo fan, then I suspect that these people may be kinda stupid. Not to mention that there's barely anything of substance in this criticism about the writing, performances, set pieces, gameplay - all of which I thought were pretty excellent. And no, I really did not require some arcane knowledge about Halo lore. I'm a pretty casual fan of the series, having played all of the mainline games and having some cursory knowledge about the background lore. It's really not that complex, it's just fun space opera stuff that doesn't even challenge your intellect too much, and it's mostly about the action and drama. I like the fact that they tried to take the series in a surprising new direction with this new trilogy, and I even found this new storyline to be more engaging thanks to higher emotional stakes provided by established characters that you know and care about, being thrown into this new morally ambiguous and complex situation. But beyond that, it's just a series of games with a pulpy plot about a soldier guy shooting aliens. It's not 2001: A Space Odyssey for Chrissakes.

Anyway, good job Halo fans. Now we'll never gonna see the conclusion to this trilogy because the studio got cold feet after the backlash it got from the fanbase. Instead of that, we got Halo Infinite. A game in which I could barely follow the story. And I just assumed it was perhaps due to the fact that I didn't play Halo 5 prior to playing Infinite, but turns out that no. That wasn't the case at all. They just attempted to push a reset button by largely ignoring the events of Halo 5 and starting Infinite in media res, while providing little to no context about how we even got there. And the result is a game with a wonderful combat loop that's fun to play as long as you roam the open world, but as soon as you have to deal with the story missions, it becomes a dull, impenetrable slog.

I hope you're happy.

I thought that it was a pretty awesome game and a very solid middle chapter of what was supposed to be a trilogy, I presume. But I guess now we'll never gonna see a proper resolution to this storyline because Halo fans be like: "waaah, why Cortana is the bad guy?", "waaah, why can't I play as Mister Chef for the twelfth consecutive game in a row?", "waaah, I can't be happy about anything!"

Reading some random comments around the net feels like listening to those die hard Star Wars dorks who always bitch about literally everything that's not the original trilogy or the expanded universe.

Like, for example, take this extremely long-winded response to a question that I found while Googling why do people dislike Halo 5 so much. It's basically some turbo-fan contraditcting herself by first criticizing the game for expecting the audience to have prior knowledge about some obscure lore that's apparently only described in the books but then, a few sentences later, criticizes the game for not adhering to some obscure piece of lore that one can only know about if they read the books. Or she's criticizing 343 for giving Master Chief more character because he is supposed to be a silent protagonist, but then almost immediately kinda praising the fact that he has more complex relationships with other charters in the story? Seriously, if that's like a typical example of a die hard Halo fan, then I suspect that these people may be kinda stupid. Not to mention that there's barely anything of substance in this criticism about the writing, performances, set pieces, gameplay - all of which I thought were pretty excellent. And no, I really did not require some arcane knowledge about Halo lore. I'm a pretty casual fan of the series, having played all of the mainline games and having some cursory knowledge about the background lore. It's really not that complex, it's just fun space opera stuff that doesn't even challenge your intellect too much, and it's mostly about the action and drama. I like the fact that they tried to take the series in a surprising new direction with this new trilogy, and I even found this new storyline to be more engaging thanks to higher emotional stakes provided by established characters that you know and care about, being thrown into this new morally ambiguous and complex situation. But beyond that, it's just a series of games with a pulpy plot about a soldier guy shooting aliens. It's not 2001: A Space Odyssey for Chrissakes.

Anyway, good job Halo fans. Now we'll never gonna see the conclusion to this trilogy because the studio got cold feet after the backlash it got from the fanbase. Instead of that, we got Halo Infinite. A game in which I could barely follow the story. And I just assumed it was perhaps due to the fact that I didn't play Halo 5 prior to playing Infinite, but turns out that no. That wasn't the case at all. They just attempted to push a reset button by largely ignoring the events of Halo 5 and starting Infinite in media res, while providing little to no context about how we even got there. And the result is a game with a wonderful combat loop that's fun to play as long as you roam the open world, but as soon as you have to deal with the story missions, it becomes a dull, impenetrable slog.

I hope you're happy.
Well Im sorry if I, as a star wars fan , cant accept some brain dead, feminist driven , disrespectful shit that disney wants to throw at me .... is time to stop also with this "toxic fans" bullshit .. entertainment in general is falling apart, in games, movies and etc.. and things like TOP GUN MAVERICK came to prove that when done right, classic movies and characters can be appreciated and receive as much or more success as the original... all it takes is RESPECT and LOVE for the orginal creation amd talented people behind the project.
 

Rykan

Member
I've played every single Halo game prior to the release of Halo 5 (Except the spinoffs like Halo Wars) and I have honestly no idea wat the fuck is going on in that game. Gameplay was pretty good, level design was boring and overall I thought the experience was alright.

Game looks incredible though, especially on a Series X.
 

VAVA Mk2

Member
Campaign was not great. Story was terrible and the simple squad stuff they put in for campaign sucked especially when you get downed and the AI for Blue Team/Osiris sucks at reviving you.
 

Kvally

Member
I enjoy Halo 5 campaign and have played through the campaign 4 times. Had a lot of fun. I enjoy Halo Infinite campaign as well.

I guess I don’t think too much into games. I just want to have fun.
 

gladdys

Member
I thought that it was a pretty awesome game and a very solid middle chapter of what was supposed to be a trilogy, I presume. But I guess now we'll never gonna see a proper resolution to this storyline because Halo fans be like: "waaah, why Cortana is the bad guy?", "waaah, why can't I play as Mister Chef for the twelfth consecutive game in a row?", "waaah, I can't be happy about anything!"

Reading some random comments around the net feels like listening to those die hard Star Wars dorks who always bitch about literally everything that's not the original trilogy or the expanded universe.

Like, for example, take this extremely long-winded response to a question that I found while Googling why do people dislike Halo 5 so much. It's basically some turbo-fan contraditcting herself by first criticizing the game for expecting the audience to have prior knowledge about some obscure lore that's apparently only described in the books but then, a few sentences later, criticizes the game for not adhering to some obscure piece of lore that one can only know about if they read the books. Or she's criticizing 343 for giving Master Chief more character because he is supposed to be a silent protagonist, but then almost immediately kinda praising the fact that he has more complex relationships with other charters in the story? Seriously, if that's like a typical example of a die hard Halo fan, then I suspect that these people may be kinda stupid. Not to mention that there's barely anything of substance in this criticism about the writing, performances, set pieces, gameplay - all of which I thought were pretty excellent. And no, I really did not require some arcane knowledge about Halo lore. I'm a pretty casual fan of the series, having played all of the mainline games and having some cursory knowledge about the background lore. It's really not that complex, it's just fun space opera stuff that doesn't even challenge your intellect too much, and it's mostly about the action and drama. I like the fact that they tried to take the series in a surprising new direction with this new trilogy, and I even found this new storyline to be more engaging thanks to higher emotional stakes provided by established characters that you know and care about, being thrown into this new morally ambiguous and complex situation. But beyond that, it's just a series of games with a pulpy plot about a soldier guy shooting aliens. It's not 2001: A Space Odyssey for Chrissakes.

Anyway, good job Halo fans. Now we'll never gonna see the conclusion to this trilogy because the studio got cold feet after the backlash it got from the fanbase. Instead of that, we got Halo Infinite. A game in which I could barely follow the story. And I just assumed it was perhaps due to the fact that I didn't play Halo 5 prior to playing Infinite, but turns out that no. That wasn't the case at all. They just attempted to push a reset button by largely ignoring the events of Halo 5 and starting Infinite in media res, while providing little to no context about how we even got there. And the result is a game with a wonderful combat loop that's fun to play as long as you roam the open world, but as soon as you have to deal with the story missions, it becomes a dull, impenetrable slog.

I hope you're happy.
Fans/customers, who spend their money on products are entitled to an opinion on said product whether you agree with it or not.

For me, I enjoyed halo 5 overall.

I did not like the mtx in mp and I did not like the misleading marketing campaign which alluded to a story with political intrigue, which would have been better than what we got. I would of preferred they left her dead from the end of halo 4, I like storylines with consequences.

People expect to be master chief in a mainline halo title (there was controversy about the role of raiden in mgs2 with the fans expecting to be snake).

Cortana storyline did get wrapped up in infinite.

Essentially the story from Halo wars 2 was better received and they co opted it for infinites campaign.

Bit of a ramble and all the above is of course just my opinion.
 

kuncol02

Banned
I liked the campaign though it wasn't that great. But even as someone who knows quite a bit of Halo lore, I felt like I was randomly thrown in the middle of a story with absolutely no effort being put into enlightening me. So I can definitely understand other people's complaints. Me personally was excited to finally be playing as the much read and heard about Blue Team.

Multiplayer was fun for a while, but an absolute goofy shitshow and the furthest departe from Halo we've seen so far.

Also still can't get over how ridiculously ugly forge maps looked. Unfortunately that hasn't been much improved on in Infinite either.



Yeah people were stupid to complain about basic functions that had been part of the franchise since the early 2000s. I mean Infinite finally gave us all of that and more, right? Oh wait.

- No splitscreen
- No forge on launch
- No working theater
- No content

But I guess that's complaining too so I'm hoping for the next game to be even worse!
In what world forge and open world campaign with splitscreen are basic features?
From what other games "fans" expect same feature set?
 

STARSBarry

Gold Member
Halo 5 was so bad that I boxed up all my xbox games and my launch one console and put it away, never to be touched again until several years later when I traded them in alongside my PS4 to get a PS4 Pro.

I remember distinctly getting £1 for Sunset Overdrive, probably the game I enjoyed the most on the one, I mean it was just the final nail in the coffin for the whole "Xbox got no games" meme, it was more accurate to say "Xbox got no games worth playing"

I didn't really go back to xbox until they started bringing games to PC with the Forza Horizon series. So for me Guardians was so bad it turned me off an entire platform which took literal years to recover, different standards I guess, I don't play CoD which is the key I find for people who enjoy Halo 5, since it was literally just space CoD.
 
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Banjo64

cumsessed
Halo 3 launched with 11 maps.

Halo 3 launched with 8 standard sized maps (for 4 vs 4 game modes), and 3 for Big Team Battle. It also launched with Forge.

Infinite launched with 7 standard sized maps.

I think the issue 343 has is that the maps that 3 launched with, like Guardian and The Pit, are some of the best maps in any FPS game period with infinite replayability. They have become instant classics over time. Whilst the maps in Infinite aren’t bad, I don’t see any of them ageing in the same way.
 

Drizzlehell

Banned
People expect to be master chief in a mainline halo title (there was controversy about the role of raiden in mgs2 with the fans expecting to be snake).
The difference is that MGS2 was a first follow up in a series that barely got off the ground and everyone was anticipating Snake's next adventure. In Halo you played as the same guy like half a dozen times already and his story was already done by the end of the third game. Shoving him into every game just to avoid incessant whining from the fans of the series only leads to creative bankruptcy and I would relish more Halo games like Reach where you don't have to play as the same character and therefore, the writers would have more freedom to explore new stories and ideas.

Not to mention that he barely even has a character. He's just a cool-looking armor and a badass voice but you'd be hard pressed to describe him as a person so I don't know why does everyone get so up in arms about him every time like he's the greatest character of all time.
 
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STARSBarry

Gold Member
The difference is that MGS2 was a first follow up in a series that barely got off the ground and everyone was anticipating Snake's next adventure. In Halo you played as the same guy like half a dozen times already and his story was already done by the end of the third game. Shoving him into every game just to avoid incessant whining from the fans of the series only leads to creative bankruptcy and I would relish more Halo games like Reach where you don't have to play as the same character and therefore, the writers would have more freedom to explore new stories and ideas.

Reach, ODST, Wars & Wars 2 was liked by fans, 343 games being shit on the other hand seems to be a running issue more than the fans whining about the franchise.

The complaints about the Master Chief collection (giveaway in the title) which took a decade to fix is not just a whiney fanbase about lack of chief, but the fact that core features for games didn't even work and the dev team where incapable of getting them working for a literal decade.
 
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01011001

Banned
I thought that it was a pretty awesome game and a very solid middle chapter of what was supposed to be a trilogy, I presume. But I guess now we'll never gonna see a proper resolution to this storyline because Halo fans be like: "waaah, why Cortana is the bad guy?", "waaah, why can't I play as Mister Chef for the twelfth consecutive game in a row?", "waaah, I can't be happy about anything!"

Reading some random comments around the net feels like listening to those die hard Star Wars dorks who always bitch about literally everything that's not the original trilogy or the expanded universe.

Like, for example, take this extremely long-winded response to a question that I found while Googling why do people dislike Halo 5 so much. It's basically some turbo-fan contraditcting herself by first criticizing the game for expecting the audience to have prior knowledge about some obscure lore that's apparently only described in the books but then, a few sentences later, criticizes the game for not adhering to some obscure piece of lore that one can only know about if they read the books. Or she's criticizing 343 for giving Master Chief more character because he is supposed to be a silent protagonist, but then almost immediately kinda praising the fact that he has more complex relationships with other charters in the story? Seriously, if that's like a typical example of a die hard Halo fan, then I suspect that these people may be kinda stupid. Not to mention that there's barely anything of substance in this criticism about the writing, performances, set pieces, gameplay - all of which I thought were pretty excellent. And no, I really did not require some arcane knowledge about Halo lore. I'm a pretty casual fan of the series, having played all of the mainline games and having some cursory knowledge about the background lore. It's really not that complex, it's just fun space opera stuff that doesn't even challenge your intellect too much, and it's mostly about the action and drama. I like the fact that they tried to take the series in a surprising new direction with this new trilogy, and I even found this new storyline to be more engaging thanks to higher emotional stakes provided by established characters that you know and care about, being thrown into this new morally ambiguous and complex situation. But beyond that, it's just a series of games with a pulpy plot about a soldier guy shooting aliens. It's not 2001: A Space Odyssey for Chrissakes.

Anyway, good job Halo fans. Now we'll never gonna see the conclusion to this trilogy because the studio got cold feet after the backlash it got from the fanbase. Instead of that, we got Halo Infinite. A game in which I could barely follow the story. And I just assumed it was perhaps due to the fact that I didn't play Halo 5 prior to playing Infinite, but turns out that no. That wasn't the case at all. They just attempted to push a reset button by largely ignoring the events of Halo 5 and starting Infinite in media res, while providing little to no context about how we even got there. And the result is a game with a wonderful combat loop that's fun to play as long as you roam the open world, but as soon as you have to deal with the story missions, it becomes a dull, impenetrable slog.

I hope you're happy.

and once again a long-winded opinion about a game containing nothing but story conversation and completely ignoring gameplay, gamedesign, Leveldesign, enemy design, gunplay, pacing, art direction...

I'm not surprised yet still disappointed every time it happens.

Halo 5 is mainly disliked DUE TO THE GAMEPLAY.
I have no idea where you got your weird rant about the story from, but I can tell you as a long time Halo fan, the story and characters was such an unimportant component as to why I think Halo 5 is not a good Halo game that I personally wouldn't even once bring it up in a discussion about the game.


let's get into why Halo 5 is a mediocre game in general and a bad Halo title.
it's not all bad but the bad outweighs the good.

first of all, the enemy behaviour.
no single enemy shows off better what is wrong with how enemies are designed and how the combat was designed than the Hunters.

Hunters have always been the tank class that forces you to strategize your approach around the fact that they are nearly indestructible from the front and have a huge energy cannon that will eliminate you instantly.

you have to thin out the other enemies while dodging them and their bullets, and in the end you use their slow movement speed against them and kill them from behind.

so what went wrong in Halo 5 then? well the developers didn't really put much care into designing their behaviour according to their gameplay purpose.
in older games their attack animations give the player enough time to react and to outplay them.
not so in Halo 5. in Halo 5 whoever was responsible for the animations and the AI behaviour just didn't give a shit. because in 5 their melee attack has basically no wind up time and instantly fucks you up as soon as you get close to them. making outmanoeuvring them tedious and unfair unless you play coop. but as soon as there are 2 on the field even in coop it's fucking tedious to fight them.

the Hunters are a good example of this due to their very simple design purpose, but these kind of annoyances are common in many enemies and other design choices.
attack patterns are often unfair and/or annoying to counter.

the whole game just doesn't feel very well designed.



next is the "enhanced mobility" which not only misses what Halo is about but also kills the pacing of gunfights in the Multiplayer and ruins map design.
the bad starts right off the bat with a ridiculously narrow FOV in a game that demands fast and hectic manoeuvring from the player, which is a direct clash of design. the game wants to be super vertical and fast, but the slow max aim speed and low FOV make this feel stilted and cumbersome.

further more, the original design philosophies around Halo's combat and gameplay was centered around augmenting your character with objects and weapons found on the battlefield, while Halo 5 basically makes your movement the most important "weapon".

and last but not least the Map Design.
maps needed to be elongated because now everyone is sprinting, climbing and thrusting across the maps.
this results in often long stretches of hallways and barely any cover.
this in return results in players running away from gunfights more than ever before.
because you can't shoot while sprinting the player that chases you can not stop you from running away from the battley and because there are long stretches of nothingness in order to elongate the maps, players usually are on one or the other side of these long corridors in order to have cover.

so you are often far away from the enemy, if you want to get closer the enemy just runs away and you can't do anything about it, and because the maps are now way more stretched out the pacing of matches is slowed down significantly in general.



next, the game launched without half the modes people expect from Halo. no Infection, no Forge, no Big Team Battle etc.
this was a big deal, especially because Halo 4 already was disappointing in many ways in how it handled certain modes, and people rightfully expected them to fix all the issues in Halo 5, only to be meat with yet another delay and unfinished release.


and because I don't want to write a whole novel my last point about it,
the extreme focus on eSports instead of the social aspects.

all social features of Halo have been stripped away ever since Bungie left.
you can't stay in the same lobbie if you want, no real pre game lobby, no fun whacky modes on launch, no file share etc.

game modes were hyper focused on esports. I mean we got Breakout as the new shiny mode, a mode that was entirely played on perfectly symmetrical maps that are set inside a simulated environment and are made up of simple building blocks.

and the only more casual mode was Warzone, a mode based entirely around random unlocks that were obtainable by buying REQ Packs with real or in-game money.



as I said I could make a way more detailed and long post, but I'm cutting it short here for the sake of my sanity and the potential readers.

TLDR: who the fuck cares about the story? it was the game's design, monetisation and content that was the issue.
and the fact that people exclusively talk about the story when talking about why they like or dislike a game is sad.
 
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Drizzlehell

Banned
Reach, ODST, Wars & Wars 2 was liked by fans, 343 games being shit on the other hand seems to be a running issue more than the fans whining about the franchise.

The complaints about the Master Chief collection (giveaway in the title) which took a decade to fix is not just a whiney fanbase about lack of chief, but the fact that core features for games didn't even work and the dev team where incapable of getting them working for a literal decade.
Read some of the other comments ITT. Likely the only reason why people weren't bitching about the absence of MC in those games is because they're considered spin-offs, but according to whiny fans, all the mainline games should have him and no one else from now until the end of time.

Just like everyone is expecting all the mainline Star Wars movies to be about a Skywalker.

And I say fuck that because it will get boring and stale eventually.
 
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If the vitriol surrounding the mediocre Halo 5 is too much, glad you wasn't around for Halo: Reach. There's a bit of revisionism around it these days but at launch the vitriol was insane, being a prequel and playing as your own Spartan in SP instead of MC was probably the least of the hate it got funnily enough.

Pretty crazy thinking back considering it's one of the best in the series for me. Peak SP from Bungie.
 

Drizzlehell

Banned
If the vitriol surrounding the mediocre Halo 5 is too much, glad you wasn't around for Halo: Reach. There's a bit of revisionism around it these days but at launch the vitriol was insane, being a prequel and playing as your own Spartan in SP instead of MC was probably the least of the hate it got funnily enough.

Pretty crazy thinking back considering it's one of the best in the series for me. Peak SP from Bungie.
I'm glad as well, especially considering that Reach was one of my favorites, lol. I only played it when MCC came out on PC and I easily played through it like 5 times and beaten it on Legendary. If you say that there was so much hate towards it because it didn't have Master Chief in it then that's exactly the kind of thing that I was referring to when sayin that turbo-fans suck, lol.
 
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STARSBarry

Gold Member
If the vitriol surrounding the mediocre Halo 5 is too much, glad you wasn't around for Halo: Reach. There's a bit of revisionism around it these days but at launch the vitriol was insane, being a prequel and playing as your own Spartan in SP instead of MC was probably the least of the hate it got funnily enough.

Pretty crazy thinking back considering it's one of the best in the series for me. Peak SP from Bungie.

I was, and your right, the least complained about part was master chief, it was hated early on because of how the armor abilities changed the meta, especially armor lock and sprint. The balance was whack and even when people got time to work out the new play style, it just was not very fun in team battles for the guy your shooting at or stick with a plasma to just lock up. There was fun to be had with some of the other abilties like decoy though however it took some major balance changes before the playerbase started to come around (especially nerfs to armor lock). Reach at launch is not what most people have played in the collection today.

People appreciated the "own Spartan" thing, especially for coop at the time. Lots of hours spent grinding just to get the next piece and customise it online.

Suffice to say people who tend to blame the Halo fanbase for shit are people who havent played Halo prior to 343 (funny that) and have come over from CoD (low standards)
 
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01011001

Banned
If the vitriol surrounding the mediocre Halo 5 is too much, glad you wasn't around for Halo: Reach. There's a bit of revisionism around it these days but at launch the vitriol was insane, being a prequel and playing as your own Spartan in SP instead of MC was probably the least of the hate it got funnily enough.

Pretty crazy thinking back considering it's one of the best in the series for me. Peak SP from Bungie.

well Reach set a bad precedent and people disliked its design philosophies for good reasons, and especially on launch the balancing of the armor abilities was TERRIBLE

then there was the introduction of Bloom which basically took away the skill based nature of Halo 3 and replaced it with random chance... which is objectively a bad choice for an arena shooter.


Reach is remembered way more fondly due to 2 reasons.

1: Halo went so steep downhill from there that it makes Reach's shortcomings and bad design choices seem super mild in comparison.

and 2: Halo Reach was LOADED WITH CONTENT. even if you disliked how the matchmaking modes worked, you had the at the time revolutionary Forge to make your own maps and you could use the robust custom game editor to make your own modes and basically fix the game yourself.
I mean that's how MLG played the game... they made the armor abilities map pickups and adjusted speed and maps to be more like classic Halo.

and then there was the big Title Update rebalance that rebalanced armor abilities and reduced bloom
 
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MOTM

Banned
Halo fans are the gaming equivalent of hardcore SJW’s or the crazies on twitter whining, crying and throwing a tantrum like it’s their hobby.

I can’t think about a worse online community.
 

sainraja

Member
It's the only Halo game I finished and I don't have any previous games to compare it to, well, outside of Reach which I didn't get to finish, can't remember why since I was enjoying it. I don't remember the characters or the story all that much but yeah I didn't think it was bad.
 

oji-san

Banned
I only played Halo 5 before playing Infinite and had a lot of fun, also liked the story. I liked all Halo campaigns.
 
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TaroYamada

Member
Halo 5 is a good game that unfortunately lacks couch co-op but it is better than Halo 4, Halo 4 was pretty damn awful. Prometheans are bad enemies. It's also probably better than Infinite tbh. Sad how the franchise has gone off the rails.
 
I’d say Halo 5 is like a 7/10 game. The production value is really good, but several things hold it back. The gameplay is fine, but the maps in the campaign are all very arena-like, likely to accommodate the forced 4 player aspect. Despite visually looking nice and varied, the different levels all end up feeling very samey. The repeated boss fight is also baffling.

The story is also kinda meh. The whole Locke hunting Chief is an interesting premise, but they don’t really do anything with it and it doesn’t really lead to any real shake ups in the story. Cortana coming back kind of undermines the whole story of 4. Then making her evil is kind of an interesting premise, but I don’t know if they do anything with it in Infinite (I’ve read online people say that it doesn’t, but I’ll see for myself as I’m a little ways into Infinite now after getting it for Christmas).

In fact the whole 343 story arc is a big mess. I remember before 4 came out they said it was going to be a whole arc about the forerunners, and then the big bad from 4 dies at the end. Would’ve made more sense to keep him as an overarching villian for a new trilogy. Instead each game introduces a new villian of the week and it feels disjointed, especially compared to the Bungie games. And half the villains die off-screen unceremoniously for some reason.

None of the games are high art in terms of storytelling, but at least you can play the Bungie games and have one mostly cohesive story without having to have book knowledge (playing Reach through 3). It’s a valid criticism.

I’m more of a casual Halo fan, but it’s plain to see Halo 5 is half baked in many regards.
 

Havoc2049

Member
Halo 5 was a bad Halo game and a slightly below average FPS.

- The story didn't flow and was kinda corney and juvenile. That opening scene in Halo 5 with Team Osiris running down the mountain and easily laying waste to a large Covenant battle group is cringy and corney.

- The one boss fight that lasted through a large portion of the game felt cheap and became boring.

- The hub areas felt lifeless and all the hub characters just mumbled the same lines over and over.

-Almost no character development for Blue Team and Team Osiris and besides Buck, all the characters felt lifeless, including the Master Chief. The freindly AI was horrible and buggy, which just added to the feeling of not caring about my team.

-After maybe the best design of Cortona in Halo 4, Cortana in Halo 5 just looked fugly and became an unlikable character. And to stay on that, all the characters in Halo 5, with the exception of Buck, have almost zero endearing qualities, which is a stark contrast to past Halo games, which had tons of likable characters that fans enjoyed.

-The multiplayer lacked a proper BTB and was eventually just populated with crappy forge maps with seams all over the place that effected vehicle and player physics and movement.

-Spartans started to look like Power Rangers with all the goofy armor sets they came up with in multiplayer.

-The map design was below average in Halo 5 multiplayer, with Plaza being the only decent map.

I could go on, but nobody likes a wall of text.
 

gladdys

Member
The difference is that MGS2 was a first follow up in a series that barely got off the ground and everyone was anticipating Snake's next adventure. In Halo you played as the same guy like half a dozen times already and his story was already done by the end of the third game. Shoving him into every game just to avoid incessant whining from the fans of the series only leads to creative bankruptcy and I would relish more Halo games like Reach where you don't have to play as the same character and therefore, the writers would have more freedom to explore new stories and ideas.

Not to mention that he barely even has a character. He's just a cool-looking armor and a badass voice but you'd be hard pressed to describe him as a person so I don't know why does everyone get so up in arms about him every time like he's the greatest character of all time.
I think MGS2 was the 4th game in the series at that point.

Master Chief is the nearest thing MS have to a Mario.

You can’t say just because people are vocal online it is the majority of halo fans.

Halo 3 odst was well received but had no bait and switch marketing.

Maybe that was the issue?
 

Drizzlehell

Banned
I think MGS2 was the 4th game in the series at that point.

Master Chief is the nearest thing MS have to a Mario.

You can’t say just because people are vocal online it is the majority of halo fans.

Halo 3 odst was well received but had no bait and switch marketing.

Maybe that was the issue?
Yeah but not many people knew or cared about those Metal Gear games from MSX. Metal Gear Solid was the first one as far as most people are concerned and the first one that really mattered, tbh.

Anyway, I'm mostly judging by comments posted ITT so far, which seems to be rather unanimous that if it's a mainline game in the series then MC has to be a star. Anyway, not to hammer the point with a sledgehammer but I just think that expecting the series to be forever about Master Chief and Cortana squaring off against the Covenant will only result in creatively bankrupt storytelling, which is pretty much what's been going on after the original storyline was concluded in Halo 3. Chief should've just stayed dead in my opinion.
 

Hobbygaming

has been asked to post in 'Grounded' mode.
I enjoyed halo 5 but it was the worst halo by far. It had that COD feel. Infinite gunplay is god tier.
Halo 5 was weird because it had an atrocious campaign but like some of the greatest multiplayer from the little I played of Warzone
 

gladdys

Member
Yeah but not many people knew or cared about those Metal Gear games from MSX. Metal Gear Solid was the first one as far as most people are concerned and the first one that really mattered, tbh.

Anyway, I'm mostly judging by comments posted ITT so far, which seems to be rather unanimous that if it's a mainline game in the series then MC has to be a star. Anyway, not to hammer the point with a sledgehammer but I just think that expecting the series to be forever about Master Chief and Cortana squaring off against the Covenant will only result in creatively bankrupt storytelling, which is pretty much what's been going on after the original storyline was concluded in Halo 3. Chief should've just stayed dead in my opinion.
I can see that view.

I felt in halo 4 they was looking to evolve chief into a new type of human (probably an eternal type being like the doom slayer).

To move on from chief you either got to put him back on ice like the end of halo 3, kill him, or do a time skip and look at new characters, settings, etc.

But from a value point of view you can’t do that to him.

Tough one and I admit you do have a point.
 
Hope it comes out on pc someday

Since I got a series x, I have played through halo 3 and odst since they support 4 player crossplay and it was a blast. Curiously (not curious it's 343) there is still a lot missing from MCC

halo reach doesnt have 4 player crossplay still
Halo 4 also doesn't.
would be so sweet if they added 4 player coop to halo 1 and 2.
 
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